Film Round-Up: Unhinged, Proxima and Greyhound
CINEMAS ARE OPEN AGAIN! BUT NOTHING’S ON!
Unhinged
Russell Crowe gets road rage and decides to ruin the day of a stressed single mother by killing everyone she knows. Well, it was nice to end the months of being unable to step into a cinema with a schlocky thriller that will probably end up finding a good home on Netflix at some point. It does it’s job perfectly well. Crowe is incredibly creepy and scary and is almost like a slasher horror villain at times as he hunts down Rachel. It is tense, worrying and it keeps you on edge throughout most of the film. It’s not perfect. It relies a lot on stupid decision making from our leads as well as the police being just terrible at their job, but it’ll serve as a decent thriller. I can’t say you need to rush out to the cinema to see it, especially in the current climate, but when it hits streaming you’ll be entertained for an hour and a half.
Proxima
Eva Green trains to go to space but must balance that with being a mother to a young girl. This film, which is mostly in French, is a bit too subtle. While it wants to tell the story of Eva training hard to make sure she is able to go to space, it obviously wants to make a point about the difference between fathers and mothers. Eva is constantly worrying and fretting about her daughter while training while her fellow astronaut Matt Dillon is not at all concerned about his sons. There is also an undercurrent of sexism, not anything over the top but it’s certainly there. But I only really thought about that because the film is long, slow and gives you plenty of time to reflect on it. I think it needed to enforce that theme more to make it have more of an impact. Despite that and some plot threads which never go anyway, this is an interesting watch with a fantastic performance from Eva Green. It’s slow but the examination of the relationship between an ambitious mother and a daughter that needs attention is a good one.
Greyhound
Tom Hanks captains a submarine, the movie. We haven’t had a good submarine movie in a while have we? I suppose some do count The Last Jedi but sometimes you need a proper submarine, not a spaceship with Laura Linney on it. And this is just a proper, tense submarine movie which reminds you why this was a beloved sub-genre at one point. Yes, it’s a bit unlucky for the film that by having Tom Hanks being the captain of a seagoing vehicle that they are going to be compared to Captain Phillips. And that is really unfair because that’s a modern classic and if I’m honest, this one doesn’t really come close. It is still very good though and fits the mold as a proper dad film, something that middle-aged men everywhere are going to adore. It is incredibly tense throughout and the taunting of the German subs gives Hanks a chance to act. It’s nothing spectacular but you’ll enjoy it and your dad will love it.
